


In eternity, I choose you

by lovestillaround



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Angst, But also love and care, Dreams and Nightmares, Fear of Death, Hospitals, M/M, fictional illness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-04
Updated: 2019-12-04
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:20:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21672847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovestillaround/pseuds/lovestillaround
Summary: Dan starts having unusual dreams, and they all seem to have a common denominator
Relationships: Dan Howell/Phil Lester
Comments: 14
Kudos: 27





	In eternity, I choose you

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the @phanworkschallenge on tumblr.

He was trying to find a meaning in life. In the outside world, and inside his own head. In the trees and buildings and pigeons and warmth of the sunbeams.

He never really found it. What he found was Phil.

Well, maybe he has learned over the years how to enjoy his life, how to appreciate what he has and how to strive for what he doesn’t have, how to make inner peace with himself (kind of), including his past self and his present self. How to talk with people and how to understand them better. How to be kinder and what to think about politics. He’s been active in charities and a bit less active on YouTube (especially lately), and his body has been much more active but not fit enough to run a marathon.

It’s fine. He has himself, and maybe he doesn’t have a meaning, but he has a life that he has built for himself and for Phil.

For Phil, who’s an animal charmer and who eats tonnes of sugar, whose tongue sometimes sticks out when he laughs and whose arms are warm and soft and dotted with freckles.

In those arms, he falls asleep.

*

“In eternity, I choose you,” he says, looking at Phil inside his dream. Everything is bright, so bright that he can barely keep his eyes open. Phil’s wearing an armour which reflects the light and which surface cracks the moment Dan speaks out.

He’s terrified. He can feel his heart beating faster, and he’s instantly filled with this frantic energy that makes him reach forward and try to hold the pieces together. He presses his palms to the cracks that are getting larger and larger, but the broken pieces fall onto the ground anyway, one after another and then all at once, making a terrible, terrible sound that echoes in Dan’s head long after he wakes up.

*

“I’ve been having those dreams, you know. Dreams where everything breaks,” Dan says when it’s morning and when Phil asks what’s wrong.

“Everything?”

“Well, your armour,” Dan answers, feeling small and silly.

Phil smiles at him. “I’m wearing an armour? Am I a knight?”

“I don’t know,” Dan mouths. He cuddles into Phil like he’s scared and wounded. Maybe he is.

*

“I chose you to end eternity,” a strong voice hollers through the space. Dan can’t locate it. He looks around, but everything turns black, and he isn’t sure anymore whether he’s dreaming or not.

He hears indistinct cracks, and for some reason they scare him more than the darkness.

*

He writes them all in his dream diary, even if he isn’t sure whether they truly are dreams.

“What else would they be?” Phil asks.

Dan tries not to attach any hidden meaning to the fact that he’s gotten very cold the moment Phil entered the room. Goosebumps cover the skin of his arms, and what’s even worse is that he starts to shiver, like a new-born puppy. He’s annoyed at it because he can’t control it.

Phil notices it, because he asks, “Are you cold?”

Dan nods and rubs the skin of his arms energetically.

“Are you getting sick?” Phil’s palm is pressed to Dan’s forehead now. “Oh, you’re sweaty.”

Dan looks how Phil rubs his wet hand off his trousers, how he then walks towards the other end of the couch and picks up the blanket.

He comes back and wraps Dan up in it very tightly.

*

One day he sees a tweet.

_wtf why won’t my brain use its energy to fight the cold and instead creates all those bizarre dreams_

He likes the tweet and continues scrolling. It’s a weird coincidence, and that’s all he thinks. He doesn’t dwell on stuff like that, really.

*

He much rather spends his time paying attention to Phil.

“Please,” he whispers, clutching onto Phil’s shirt.

“You’re sick.” Phil’s eyes glisten as he says that, betraying him, so now Dan knows Phil’s horny too. Unfortunately, Phil is also pretty stubborn, and _apparently_ , the perspective of Dan giving him an orgasm is not tempting enough to make him forget about his moral rules (if you can call a temporary celibate for the time when your partner is sick a moral rule).

“I’m alright,” Dan says. His hand travels down to Phil’s crotch, and he’s almost there when Phil grabs his wrist.

“You have fever,” Phil says.

“No, I don’t.”

Dan’s acting like a brat, so he isn’t at all surprised when he sees Phil rolling his eyes.

“Alright, let’s check that.” Phil looks at him. “If it’s anything over 38 degrees, we’re not doing anything.”

“That’s not fair.” Dan pouts.

“ _You_ said you don’t have fever.”

“Alright then.”

A moment later, Dan is sitting grumpily on the bed with a thermometer under his armpit, waiting for his body temperature to be measured. After a beep, he takes it out from underneath his shirt only to see that he does, indeed, have a fever.

*

The fever doesn’t go away after a few days, as it normally would. He knows he should probably talk about it with his GP, but he figures a little bit of prolonged high temperature most likely won’t kill him, so he ends up ignoring it.

*

One day he wakes up, and it’s all over his twitter. People typing _what the fuck_ and _are you joking what the hell_ and _omg I have that too_ and other similar things, either alone or in a retweet of an article.

The article is about people getting sick – main symptoms including fever accompanied by unusual dreams.

Dan’s heart stops for a moment – or at least it feels like it does. He clicks the link and quickly scans the text.

_We’ve heard from all the affected people we spoke to that the dreams have begun a few days before the occurrence of fever, which seems to be differentiating the incidents from the common cold._

When he reaches the part where the dreams are being described, the phone in his hand starts shaking slightly, and Dan puts it away.

*

He doesn’t tell Phil straight away.

Well, he doesn’t really tell him anything at all, because it’s Phil who brings it up.

“Are you alright?” Phil asks first, joining him back on the couch. He went to the kitchen to make tea, and now Dan has a feeling that it was just an excuse to give himself a pep talk before starting a conversation.

“Yeah,” Dan answers, even though he’s absolutely sure that Phil can see through him.

Phil gets closer and just stares at Dan for a moment, and when that doesn’t evoke any reaction, he gently cups Dan’s chin. “I’ve seen that,” he says.

“You’ve seen what?” Dan tries to pretend that he doesn’t know anything.

Phil looks at him pleadingly, so Dan gives up.

“It’s bullshit, Phil,” he says, but he isn’t really sure if he believes his own words.

*

He doesn’t know where he is, but he’s pretty sure that he can hear Phil. It’s quite confusing, because he doesn’t know where his voice is coming from. He spins in place, trying to detect it, but it’s all for nothing. Another thing is that he can’t understand a word, because it’s all too muffled, so he stops and strains his ears.

And then it stops. Abruptly.

Dan waits a few seconds, thinking that Phil would start talking again. He doesn’t.

“Phil!” he shouts. “Phil!” He spins once again and looks around squinting his eyes trying to make out any possible shapes, but it seems like he’s surrounded by dark smudges. _Is it what Phil sees when he doesn’t have his glasses on?_

He shouts his name over and over again, stepping forward into the unknown terrains and then going back again. All of the sudden, he hears some cracking in the distance, as if he’s surrounded by rocks that break and fall, but once again he can’t locate the noise. It seems like it’s coming from everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

He shouts Phil’s name even louder.

*

He wakes up to Phil frantically repeating his name and shaking him.

“Dan, Dan, Dan!” Phil shouts with growing desperation until he sees that Dan is awake. “Oh god. Dan,” he says and then breathes in and out so loudly and shakily that if Dan wasn’t already in a slight state of shock, that would be the thing that would totally scare him.

But he’s way too confused to think clearly, and for a moment he just listens to Phil’s panting, not knowing what’s going on. Phil’s hands are still tightly gripping Dan’s shoulders, and he looks at Dan like he can’t believe that he’s actually there.

“Phil, it’s all good now,” Dan says quietly, finally feeling like he’s able to do something. He puts his hands on Phil’s sides and then tries to pull him in, tries to comfort him.

Phil resists it. He shakes his head and then leans back to switch on the bed lamp and grab his glasses. Now, in the dim light, he studies Dan once again, as if looking for any abnormalities.

“Are you okay?”, he asks, and Dan is almost baffled by how much fear there is in his voice.

“Yeah, I just had a bad dream,” Dan answers. He sits up, now that he’s becoming more and more alarmed. He tries to think of any possible scenarios of what has happened and asks, “Did I do something in my sleep?”

“You were screaming bloody murder,” Phil says, his voice still shaky. He brings his hands to his face and only then Dan notices a little tremor there too.

Dan doesn’t understand it. What he knows is that it _hurts_ to see Phil like this, and the sensation is physical, he can swear. It’s like every cell of his body wants to protect the person he loves the most, so he gets closer and reaches out to cover Phil’s shaking hands with his own. His fingers briefly brush the skin of Phil’s cheek and detect some wetness there.

“I couldn’t wake you up,” Phil chokes out. He gets his hands away from his face and so Dan lets go of him too. “I was like, _Dan, Dan_ ,” he says as he grabs Dan’s shoulders and shakes him gently. “And you just kept screaming my name.” Phil’s voice breaks there, and Dan almost breaks with it.

*

“I love you,” he says to Phil in the morning.

Phil clutches onto him, wraps his arm tightly around Dan’s middle and tangles their legs together, like a clingy octopus.

Dan doesn’t complain. He loves cuddles, and he loves the warmth radiating from Phil’s body, and he knows that Phil needs this touch now. Dan also loves how immaterial the warmth is, how it’s something that they can share between them. He can give something to Phil just by being there and doing pretty much nothing.

He has a great view on Phil’s hairline from this position, too, so he traces it with his finger as Phil clings onto him tightly.

*

The internet is a mess, full of people arguing whether the strange phenomenon is real or just a prank, and if it’s real then whether it’s a curse or an illness caused by some new virus or maybe if it’s a case of mass hysteria. There are also people suggesting that it might be a chemical weapon, aliens or illuminati.

Unfortunately, there’s another thing spreads through twitter and other social media fairly quickly.

_Dan liked that tweet about the dreams and fever, does it mean that he has it too?_

_i’m so worried about dan, @ the universe get the fuck off of him_

_OMG what about PHIL???_

Dan sighs and closes the app.

*

“What should I tell them?” he asks Phil later.

Phil stays quiet for a while before he says, “Maybe just tweet that you’re alright?”

The thing is, Dan doesn’t know if he’s alright. The fever is still there, and he still hasn’t gone to the doctor. _(Because it’s so ridiculous, Phil, what would I even say? That I’ve read an article on the internet about this stupid thing? They would think I’m joking.)_

He continues to feel slightly sick, and he anxiously checks the #dreamfever tag dozens of times a day for the updates on how the affected people are doing. _(It’s such a stupid tag, Phil, it sounds like a literal joke.)_

*

The affected people start reporting about new symptoms – dizziness, muscle weakness, and excessive sleeping.

Dan tweets _ducklings i appreciate the concern and want to tell you that i’m doing just fine_ on the day when he loses his balance and falls.

It sounds odd, but that’s basically what it is. One moment he’s walking through the hall and seconds later his limbs don’t seem to properly function anymore. It’s like they suddenly disconnect from his body, like his brain can’t detect all the nerves and he falls, trying to hold onto the wall but failing at it too.

It’s not like he’s fainted because he remembers absolutely everything, every moment from realising that something is terribly wrong to hitting the ground.

He sits there, scared to move, and shocked by what’s just happened when he hears Phil shouting his name, probably alarmed by the loud bang.

He wants to shout something back, but his mind is blank. He tries to think of something, like saying _“I’m alright”_ , but is he alright? _“I fell”_ sounds too weird even if it’s true, and _“can you please come here for a second?”_ is too long, especially when Dan isn’t sure if he’s even able to produce any sound anything right now.

In the end it doesn’t really matter because in no time he can hear Phil basically running up the stairs to get to him.

Soon, he can see him at the end of the hall. They briefly share a look, and then Phil starts panicking.

“Oh my god, Dan.” The high pitch of his voice is a good indicator for how stressed he must be. Another one is him pretty much falling onto his knees in front of Dan, trying to support his back as if there was some danger that he would fall again, even though he’s still sitting on the floor. Dan almost wants to laugh at him, call him an idiot, do something to break this terrible tension, but Phil starts bombarding him with questions and instructions. “What happened? Did you faint? You shouldn’t be sitting up, you should lie down–“

“I fell,” Dan interrupts him.

“Oh.” Phil’s face changes slightly, and he looks at Dan’s legs as if that would help him understand anything.

“Please, don’t panic,” Dan begs quietly.

“I’m not.” Phil’s still staring at Dan’s thighs. “I’m not. Did you hurt yourself? Can you move?”

“My knee is hurting. I hit the wall.”

“The wall?” Phil echoes.

“Yes, I… I lost my balance. I don’t know.”

Phil bites his lip. “How much does it hurt?”

“No, it’s just. Just a little.” Dan tries to bend his legs in knees, and Phil makes a gesture as if he wants to stop him. He reaches out in the general direction of Dan’s legs and stops when he sees that he can bend his legs just fine.

“Careful,” Phil says anyway.

His arm is still protectively supporting Dan’s back.

*

“Ow. Ow, careful,” Phil says when Dan’s trying to get out of bed.

His legs still feel weird, and Phil pretty much doesn’t leave his side. Dan wants to tell him to fuck off at this point, but he bites it down.

“I’m alright,” he blurts but lets Phil help him anyway. The truth is that he couldn’t walk without help. Phil supports as much of his weight as he can, and Dan’s still having trouble to move his feet forward.

Even this small trip to the bathroom wears him out, and he feels so incredibly, disproportionately tired when he gets back into bed.

He also feels incredibly angry. Maybe it’s just his reaction to stress and fear, he doesn’t know. He only knows that he’s fuming.

“Dan,” Phil says.

Dan begrudgingly turns his head to look at him.

“I think we should go to hospital.”

“I don’t want to,” Dan mutters.

Phil lays down next to Dan and puts his hand on his chest. “I know, but… I’ll be with you. You don’t have to be scared.”

“Says the person who waited, like, a whole day to go to A&E.”

Phil is hurt, Dan can see that. He tries not to show it though. “It was stupid of me to wait for so long. I understood that later,” he says, keeping the perfect composure.

Dan takes a deep breath and wipes his face. “Fuck. I’m sorry.”

Phil wraps him in a hug.

*

A huge advantage of having private healthcare is that this time he doesn’t have to wait for hours in a crowded waiting room, surrounded by people that scare him (even if this time he would surely put more effort into trying to not judge them).

He gets a private room and medical attention fairly quickly. He describes his symptoms, but he’s hesitant to mention that he’s heard of people having them too.

It’s Phil who does it. The doctor is surprised to hear about that, so Phil pulls his phone out and shows them an article. They don’t comment on it really, just ask Dan some more questions and ask him to do various things with his arms and legs. Then they disappear behind the door, saying that soon a nurse will come in to check him up.

He gets a variety of standard medical tests done on him, and he gets asked different questions. Mostly he just waits. He waits for hours. This time they’ve taken chargers, but Dan isn’t too eager to go on any social media, and playing games on his phone gives his brain too much free space to fill with worry, so he ends up mostly chatting with Phil.

His legs don’t seem to be getting any better, but this time he can at least get wheeled out to the toilet instead of trying to walk on his weak and slightly numb legs. He tries to act like it doesn’t scare him.

This time they don’t tweet about going to A&E. Dan still jokes around, trying to make himself and Phil feel a little bit less freaked-out.

After hours of waiting and being prodded, he still doesn’t know what’s wrong with him. The doctor wants to admit him to the hospital.

*

It’s weird to say goodbye to Phil in the evening, knowing that they will spend the night apart. They don’t separate that often, and when they do, it’s always planned in advance.

“Don’t worry about me, yeah?” he says when Phil leans in to give him a hug.

Phil releases the grip hesitantly. “Yeah,” he agrees, trying to smile. It looks faint, but Dan knows it’s still genuine.

He smiles back.

*

“I picked you to end eternity,” the voice says.

“You… Picked me to do _what?_ ” Dan asks before he has a chance to think about who the voice belongs to or _where the hell he is_.

“You’ve heard me. I know you did. I know everything about you.”

“Uhm. Okay. You’re a little bit creepy, mate.”

He waits for an answer, but nothing comes. He looks around but once again, he’s surrounded only by dark smudges. That’s when an idea strikes him.

He crouches down and touches the ground. It’s soil. Even though he can’t really see it, he can feel the familiar texture under his fingertips.

That’s when the voice comes back and says, “Do it.”

*

Dan feels weird, as if he has a memory gap. He doesn’t know what he was doing a few minutes ago, or even a few seconds ago, but right now he’s sitting on a bench with Phil.

“It’s our last night on Earth, Dan.”

It’s like a slap in the face. “No,” he huffs. “No, no, no, shut up. I don’t know what you mean but shut up.”

“It’s alright,” Phil says. He looks at the ground in front of him, not at Dan. His voice sounds strange, empty, but he’s there, Dan can see him.

“No, it isn’t alright! How can you–” Dan argues, but Phil interrupts him.

“It’s okay. It’s okay, just trust me. Do you trust me?”

Now Phil turns his head to look at Dan. Dan can only think that he looks like a robot. He’s getting more and more convinced that it isn’t Phil at all.

“I don’t know,” he answers weakly.

“You don’t know? Dan, I’m your boyfriend, we’ve been together for ten years and you don’t trust me at all?”

His first thought is that _he has a point_. Then he starts to wonder if it’s possible that the Phil in front of him is just a product of his imagination. But then – why would his unconscious mind ever imagine Phil _like that_ , so cold and weird and maybe even scary?

“It’s a dream. You’re in my dream and it all doesn’t make sense.”

“I’m real,” Phil tries to convince him. He extends his hand and Dan flinches back.

“No, no, Phil, don’t do this to me.”

*

“Daniel?” a voice says. A different voice. “Daniel?”

He opens his eyes instinctively, without realising that he had them closed. Now he sees a man in front of him and again, his immediate reaction is to try to jump back.

“Oh, oh, it’s okay. You’re in hospital, Daniel. And I think you had a nightmare.”

Dan tries very hard to not get embarrassed by that, but he’s sure his face has gone red.

“Well, thanks for waking me up,” he mumbles.

The nurse tells his name (Patrick), asks Dan if he’s feeling alright (he answers _yes_ ) and leaves Dan alone in his private hospital room.

It takes Dan a while to fall back to sleep. He’s scared of the nightmares, and he’s so used to falling asleep with Phil by his side that it seems like he doesn’t know how to do it without him.

*

When Dan wakes up, Phil is already there. Dan couldn’t be more happy to see him.

He tells him about the nightmare and getting woken up by a nurse.

“He was a _hot_ nurse, Phil. Honestly, better stay by my bed as long as you can or I’m totally gonna dump you for him.”

“Shut up,” Phil mutters but smiles anyway, and it feels so good to see him happy, even if only for a moment.

*

In the afternoon, he realises that something is wrong with his hands.

He reaches out to the nightstand to grab the glass of water, and he can’t do it. His arms feel normal, and he can use them just fine, but his hands seem to have become almost completely useless. He needs to put quite a lot of effort into bending his fingers, and it looks like he’s not able to grip and hold things anymore.

He clenches his hands in fists and tries again. Maybe it’s just temporal, he thinks, but then there’s no reason for him to lose the strength in his hands like this. He’s just lying in bed. He woke up some time ago, his body has had a chance to wake up, his brain has had enough time to properly connect with his nerves. Yesterday, and even this morning, he was still able to hold things in his hands, and now he can barely wrap his fingers around a glass.

“Dan,” Phil tries to get his attention. Dan gives up on trying to make his muscles work and looks at Phil. “I’ll go and tell the nurse, okay?”

“No. I’m just–” He tries to straighten his fingers, but even this turns out to be a challenge. Phil covers Dan’s left hand with his own.

“Dan.” Phil looks at him in the most pleading way, his hand strokes Dan’s so gently, so carefully. Dan looks down, and all he thinks is _how am I going to hold his hand like this_.

“I’m sure it’s nothing,” he says, mostly to pep talk himself out of the darkness that clouds his mind.

“Yeah. I’ll tell a nurse, just in case.”

This time, Dan doesn’t protest. When Phil leaves the room, he gets back to trying to make his hands cooperate.

*

Phil comes back with a doctor, sending Dan an apologetic look the moment he appears in the door. The doctor comes up to Dan, while Phil stays slightly behind.

“How are you feeling, Mr. Howell?”

“Not bad. I’m just having a problem with getting my hands to work.”

“Alright, let’s see.” She takes Dan’s hands and has a quick look at them. “Could you squeeze my hands, please?” she orders.

Dan tries. He really tries.

“As hard as you can,” she adds, and it’s the first time this day, the first time in a long time when he really wants to cry.

She gently lets go of Dan’s hand, takes a pen out of her pocket and places it on the covers in front of Dan. “Can you try to pick it up?”

Dan can’t do that either.

*

He gets ordered a CT scan, but he still needs to wait a couple more hours for it. He spends them staring at the tv, with not enough focus to follow the plot of the movies he’s attempting to watch.

Phil is still beside him, but he spends most of that time on his phone.

“What are you doing?” Dan asks.

“Just reading an article.”

“What is it about?” he asks, even though he knows the answer already.

Phil looks up from his phone, with a guilty look on his face. He’s so see-through sometimes that it almost hurts.

“Phil… Stop. Don’t look up this stuff,” Dan pleads.

Phil doesn’t say anything, and he still looks like a hurt deer.

“It’s only gonna scare you more,” Dan tries to convince him. “You know how you are. You’re only gonna panic.”

“I just want to know,” Phil says in a voice so quiet that Dan can barely hear him.

“Look, I’m–“ Dan stops and bites his lip. “I’m sure everything will be okay.”

Phil takes Dan’s hand and squeezes it. He lets go of it very quickly, as if he’s scared that he could hurt Dan just by touching him.

*

Soon, he stops remembering things. He doesn’t remember whether he had the scan or not. Sometimes he’s confused whether he’s dreaming or not, and even when he’s awake, he’s sleepy and tired pretty much all the time.

He doesn’t even have the energy to worry that much, though. It’s one thing that’s good for him, but maybe not that good for the people around him.

The dreams he remembers consist mostly of him lying on the ground. He still hears different voices coming out of nowhere and everywhere. Sometimes, he hears Phil and he really isn’t sure whether it’s real or not.

*

Then one day, he wakes up to the feeling of suffocating. It feels like he’s gotten out of the water after holding his breath, but for some reason he’s not able to take a deep breath, so he tries to help himself by taking many shallow ones. It feels more like swallowing the air than breathing, it doesn’t give him much relief, and when he realises that he isn’t sure how much longer he will be able to go on like this, he starts to panic. He looks at his sides but Phil’s not there. No one’s there.

He tries to shout, but he only manages to whimper, and that’s when – finally, thankfully – a nurse comes in.

She puts a mask onto his face and reassures him that _it’s okay, darling, it’s okay_. He closes his eyes from the sheer relief when he finally can breathe again.

Something touches his hand, and he opens his eyes to see Phil standing by his bed. He’s been crying. His eyes are full of tears, and his face is wet and slightly red. Dan doesn’t have the energy to do much, so he only blinks at him.

*

It takes him some time to adjust (mostly mentally), that his breathing is now being supported by a machine that pumps air into his lungs, and that his muscles are so weak that he can barely move.

Yet, in the long run the worst thing is that he can’t really talk. It requires more and more effort, and at this point he mostly communicates through hums. He wants to tell Phil, _don’t cry, please don’t cry, it’s okay._

He wants to squeeze his hand, but his own hands are still rather useless and uncooperative. He only manages to twitch his fingers, to which Phil reacts instantly covering them with his palm.

“It’s okay, Dan. It’s okay,” he mutters, not realising that it might be him who needs more comforting in this moment.

*

He knows that his mum has visited. He remembers seeing her. He’s almost sure that more people came, but he must have been asleep or out of it during their visits.

Phil seems to be with him all the time. At any point when Dan opens his eyes, he’s there. Dan wants to tell him to go home and rest, and he wants to ask how other people who got ill are doing. Is there still any connection between his symptoms and what’s happening to others? Did someone die?

He’s still too weak to talk, so he spends most of his awake time staring into Phil’s eyes and trying to telepathically tell him to not worry, and that he loves him, and that he’s sorry that he needs to go through it all.

*

One time, he looks at Phil who's still right next to Dan's bed.

Then the buds peak through Phil’s skin and open. On his frail, pale skin, the flowers bloom.

*

He’s alone.

His loneliness is complete, unlike the darkness that surrounds him. He can finally make out some shapes and colours. It surprises him.

He sees a kitchen table that looks scarily similar to the one his family has at home, in Wokingham. A school bench. A train seat. His butt-shaped chair. Phil’s MacBook. Phil’s giant plant. His own merch. Their old IKEA wardrobe. 

He doesn’t understand anything he sees, and he also doesn’t understand why all of the sudden he has so much more energy that he’s not lying on the ground anymore. He can stand. And maybe he can talk too.

“Phil!” he screams, experimentally.

“He’s not here,” the voice answers. “You have to do it alone, darling.”

“I have to do _what_ exactly?”

“You have to stay here for a bit.”

Dan huffs a breath. “What is here? Where the fuck am I?”

“Do you recognise all those things?”

“I guess?”

“It’s you, Dan.”

“No, it’s not me, it’s– It’s some fucking objects!“ he shouts, needing to supress the urge to run to all those chairs and tables and kick them and then smash them onto the ground.

“You should try to stay calm. You’ll see it will help,” the voice says.

“No, I will not be calm, I will not be fucking–“

He gets interrupted by the sudden strong wind. It makes such a loud noise that he almost can’t take it, or maybe it’s not the wind at all, maybe it’s something else, maybe his whole universe is getting destroyed.

He looks around and then he sees all the objects getting lifted up from the ground by the wind, or maybe by some other force. “Oh god. Fucking hell.”

Dan ducks before a flying book has the chance to hit him, gets onto the ground and then curls into himself, trying to protect his head. He stays like this, on his knees, facing the ground. His forehead touches the dry soil and soon he realises that he has sand crystals in his mouth too.

He can barely breathe.

He’s almost sure he won’t be able to fight against the wind much longer, that his body will give out and he will be carried away, then smashed somewhere. He feels so weak again, and the noise is so loud, and it’s only getting louder and louder. He has to cover up his ears because it almost hurts.

He doesn’t know what’s wrong with him or the world, and he isn’t sure if he wants to know. Is there anything he could do to help himself? Why do his dreams feel so real? It feels like if he dies now, he will also die in his real life, and he isn’t sure whether it’s his mind playing tricks on him or maybe his suspicion is true. One thing he knows is that he's not going to risk it, so he doesn't dare to move.

After a while he starts thinking that maybe the storm is calming down, but he isn’t sure if he can trust his senses. Maybe it’s just an illusion? Maybe his ears are so used to the constant noise, and his muscles are so strained from the constant effort to stay in the same position, that it only seems like it’s getting easier to take in all those sensations the more time has passed.

But then there comes a moment when he can relax his body a little and nothing bad happens. He can uncover his ears and it doesn’t hurt.

He waits for the storm to calm down, and as he waits, he thinks about his dreams. He didn’t really think about them much because they were bizarre and he was more concerned about his physical health, but now he has a chance to analyse them, and he feels like this is something he should be doing.

It started with Phil’s breaking armour if he remembers correctly, and with the sounds of everything breaking. The darkness. The shapelessness of everything. Loss of direction. Ending the eternity. Dan doesn’t know what it could mean, but maybe it’s connected to Phil, because Phil was talking about the last day on Earth and that seems to be connected with ending the eternity, in some weird and vague way.

Does it mean that he’s going to die?

His chest clenches and he feels like he can’t breathe again. He wants Phil back. He wants to see him once again, and if he can’t, he wants to see at least the dream version of him.

“Phil,” he whimpers.

The wind howls a bit stronger once again, and then the voice says, “No, it’s just you now.”

Dan cries. He fully tears up because he doesn’t want to be alone, not now. He’s been doing things with Phil since he was eighteen, he doesn’t know how to do anything without him. He doesn’t know how to deal with it all without him.

The only thing he knows is that he’s dreaming, and that he’s hurting.

And then he realises that it’s actually not the only thing he knows. He knows that he’s in hospital. He knows that Phil’s by his bed because he’s been there the whole time since Dan’s state has gotten very bad. Every time Dan woke up, Phil was there.

So, he knows Phil’s there still. Phil’s right by his side, probably worrying about him, trying to support him by being present, maybe holding his hand, maybe muttering some encouragements, maybe saying that he loves him, that Dan is strong, that he believes in him.

Dan can’t see him, but he knows that Phil’s there. He remembers the day he got admitted to the hospital and Phil telling him that he will be with him, that Dan doesn’t have to be scared.

He wants to cry again, this time from the overwhelming emotions, but he doesn’t even have time to process it because everything around him changes. The air is getting brighter, and when Dan looks around, he can see the flowers blooming among all the things shuttered by the storm.

He thinks about how the last time he saw Phil for real the flowers seemed to be blooming on him, and he lays on his back, exhausted, and closes his eyes, for the first time in a long time feeling some kind of calmness.

*

He was trying to find the meaning of his illness, for some time. The meaning of the dreams, and the reason why his body has become so weak, and why he had fever and couldn’t breathe, and the answer to the question of why it happened to him.

He didn’t find it. What he found was some new thoughts, some fresh understanding, some views on things he didn’t really reflect on before. He can’t really say that the positives outdo the negatives though. His body needs a lot of work now to try to bring it to a similar state it was in before his illness. He’s still scared that it could happen again, or that it could happen to someone he cares about.

“It’s like this evil force that takes you over,” Phil reads a tweet made by a person who recovered, one day when the fear isn’t paralysing anymore, when they’re both at their home again, when they finally have the courage to talk about what happened.

“Well, that sounds fucking spooky,” Dan answers.

“Do you think that’s what it was? A spooky thing?”

“There are no easy answers, Phil,” Dan says, mostly because he wants to avoid the hundredth discussion about whether paranormal and psychic things are real or not.

“There are easy answers.”

Dan raises his eyebrows. “Like?”

“Your mum.”

Dan growls, but secretly he still enjoys the way Phil laughs at him. He’s happy to look at the tip of Phil’s tongue sticking out between his teeth and the way he leans back because his whole body shakes from laughter. He can only think about how lucky he is to have him.

He's so happy that they’ve chosen each other.

**Author's Note:**

> [tumblr post](https://lovestillaround.tumblr.com/post/189474940973/in-eternity-i-choose-you-rating-t-words-6k)


End file.
